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When groups from around the world gather in a place as wild as Australia for something as outdoors-oriented as the World Parks Congress, they’d better not sit inside wearing neckties and high-heels all day. To that end, the recent congress in Sydney included a BioBlitz, an intense, public, 24-hour inventory of all the different living species in the area. Inspired by…

Families across the United States got a glimpse of the world of BioBlitz this weekend as CBS Sunday Morning took viewers into this year’s exploration of San Francisco’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

One soggy Saturday morning in March, six kids and their parents stared into the San Francisco Bay looking for “Mussels, Mollusks and More!” Smithsonian Marine Biologist Linda McCann was on hand to help make sense of it all. “Anybody here know what those are?” McCann asks her rapt audience. “We have a lot of barnacles,…

Every year at BioBlitz, National Geographic and the U.S. National Park Service rally to get people young and old to explore the wild spaces around them during a whirlwind 24-hour search to identify every species they can find. In advance of our next event in Golden Gate National Recreation Area, March 28-29, 2014, we’re already…

The final tally for this year’s BioBlitz at Golden Gate National Parks includes everything from a mountain lion to a tree-dwelling salamander. Top officials from the National Park Service and National Geographic describe each group of organisms. Bob Hirshon reports.

Rain doesn’t stop the BioBlitz. Citizen scientists scoured the waters and grounds of Golden Gates National Parks, from Muir Woods to the Presidio, for all the plant, animal, and insect species they could find in a 24-hour period. They found 2,304 species, surpassing the record. More than 80 species were new to the parks’ species list. And at least 15 species were identified as threatened.

By Ryan White, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. The big story of BioBlitz can’t be told without all the small stories that make up the event. See some of the best tweets, photos, and more from this year’s event.

Dan Dugan of the Nature Sounds Society shares four recordings he made at night in Muir Woods, on the eve of the Golden Gate Parks BioBlitz. Listen to a great horned owl, pileated woodpeckers, and a winter wren.

Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay is a part of the the Golden Gate National Recreation Area best known for its birds and the penitentiary from which no successful escape was recorded. But it is also the home of historic gardens rooted in times when the island was first a military base and then a forbidding prison, planted and tended by personnel and their families, often with the help of inmates. Rehabilitated after decades of neglect, the Gardens of Alcatraz are now a tourist attraction — and they were a big source of species observed for the 2014 BioBlitz in Golden Gate National Parks.

The initial scientific species count as of the 3:45 p.m. BioBlitz Closing Ceremony on Saturday was 2,304, with well over 8,600 observations recorded over the course of the two-day event, the organizers said in a news statement today. More than 80 species are new to the parks species list. At least 15 species were identified as Threatened.

When the sun goes down, the Presidio area of Golden Gate National Parks comes alive with owls, snakes, rodents, moths and, of course, bats. In this video by Bob Hirshon, a Bioblitz 2014 team of bat hunters, armed with ultrasound-detecting devices, hikes through the Lobos Creek and Dunes area of the park, looking and listening for bats.

About This Blog

A BioBlitz is a 24-hour event in which teams of volunteer scientists, families, students, teachers, and other community members work together to find and identify as many species of plants, animals, microbes, fungi, and other organisms as possible. National Geographic is helping conduct a BioBlitz in a different national park each year during the decade leading up to the U.S. National Park Service Centennial in 2016.
Goals Include

Discover, count, map, and learn about the living creatures in the park.

Provide scientists and the public an opportunity to do fieldwork together.

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